An iPhone Opinion Extravaganza

2150+ iPhone owners took our survey. Here's an inside look at some of the things they had to say.

By  |  Sunday, September 28, 2008 at 10:20 pm

App Store Analysis

“Concerning the app store: having to go through an approval process helps limit the amount of junk applications.”

“Apple’s reluctance to open the phone for all developers is unfortunate. Some very good programmers are operating on the fringes through Jailbreak or other installation exploits. Apple could stand letting these talented individuals in to open iPhone’s influence even wider. Perhaps further enhancing market share.”

” Apple (and every organization of significant size for that matter) should strive for transparency. Apple’s recent draconian application of the NDA has harmed the quality of the apps they deliver through the apple store by limiting communication between developers and by altering the relationship between developers and users (e.g. there are no betas of Apple store apps, so much of the testing is skipped). Apple should publish every detail about what software will be approved or disapproved and the NDA should be diminished significantly.”

” Kill the NDA. I need to be able to share info and ideas with other developers. Apple to be more open about the decisions they make at the app store. Free developer access for ad-hoc distribution (even 10 for free). Apple vetting to focus on broken, poor quality and malicious apps not stuff they don’t like.”

” I only hope Apple doesn’t continue to constrain the deployment of applications on the iPhone. It seems like the most horrible mistake they could make to discourage innovation and crush competition at this stage in the iPhone’s development. Or EVER, for that matter.”

“Apple has taken the hideous walled garden aproach of Verizon and Qualcomm BREW and brought it into the modern era :(”

“The reasons for the closed design of the App Store are understandable. However, their conduct and choices relating to that store (arbitrary app rejections, post-beta developer NDA, and forbidding alternate languages and libraries) are not. If they do not improve the situation, my next phone will be Android-based.”

“There are two big issues I have with the iPhone. 1) There is no good way to get third party apps’ data on or off of the iPhone. For example, long recordings of conversation. 2) The recent App Store garbage. The problem is NOT that Apple controls the App Store. There’s a certain quality control that Apple can do, and I have no problem with Apple taking a cut. The problem is cutting off the competition. That’s not acceptable. Period.”

“I think Apple is very wrong in preventing applications being added to the App Store. They should let the market decide on their usefulness, having duplicated functionality is not a good reason to stop them being added. There are some which could affect network performance therefore Apple should ask the developer to add ‘builtin weekly/monthly download limits to their software or make them not use the mobile providers network and rely of WiFi connection. It is crazy Apple are being belligerent and will only create bad feelings with both the developer and consumer communities.”

“As a developer, I am really becoming quite nervous about the app store rejections. I have 2 apps in development at the moment and have spent a lot of time and resources already, but stand to lose everything on the whim of some black-turtle-necked dude in a cubicle in Cupertino. Also, we have some ideas floating around for business applications, but the enterprise license requirements are too extreme for many of our clients.”

” Like many others, I just desperately want Apple to clarify the rules for iPhone developers. I appreciate their reasons for exercising control, but turning off developers like Wil Shipley and Rogue Amoeba is just crazy. These are award-winning developers who really get it. Apple can’t afford to lose them.”

“It’s not just apps being rejected from the App Store: it’s the fact the NDA is still in place in combination with arbitrary app rejection. I can agree with the review process being possibly beneficial, I can’t agree with the (lack of) rules they use to review apps that seems to simply suit Apple’s interest only. These factors combine to keeping the barrier to entry high. This results in the canceled Pragmatic book and developers who are discouraged to write new apps fearing rejection (myself included).”

“My biggest concern right now is with the App Store. They need clear rules about what’s allowed. The NDA makes it difficult for developers to help each other, which is desperately needed since Apple takes so long to respond. If they keep this up it’s going to push away developers and hurt the quality of apps. Aside from that they just need to keep improving the software and I’ll be very happy with it. It’s easily the best phone I’ve ever owned.”

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1 Comments For This Post

  1. Joanna Says:

    I bought my iphone last week. It worked great until today. The phone freezed on me and there’s no way to reset or restart the phone. Anyone who had the experience or know how to reset the phone, please kindly advise.

1 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. iphone-satisfaction « eonly.us Says:

    […] There’s only way to answer that question–ask a bunch of iPhone owners. Which is what we did from Friday morning through Sunday morning, when we fielded an in-depth survey on life with the iPhone. Over 2150 users of both the iPhone 3G and the original model took the time to participate. And they were a passionate bunch with strong opinions about their phones, both positive and negative. (I published a representative selection of these opinions in “An iPhone Opinion Explosion.”) […]